Examining H&M’s Marcom Tools: Social Media and Direct Email Marketing

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Literature Review
Analysis of H&M’s Marcom
Recommendations
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Today, companies are in search of the most effective ways to communicate with the target audience to attract the attention of people and keep them loyal. Marketing communications (Marcom) is a set of tools that are applied as a part of planned efforts to deliver messages of brands to customers. The key elements of Marcom include sales promotion, advertising, public relations, sponsorship, et cetera Nadeem et al. 2015; Yankova and Ozuem 2017). Successful brands promote positive customer responses to the products of a particular company. This paper aims to provide a report on H&M’s Marcom tools, namely, social media and direct email marketing, to evaluate their strategies and effectiveness. The chosen brand belongs to the mass clothing industry, being one of the most popular mass fashion retailers at a global scene.

Literature Review

Branding can be defined as the process of creating a symbol, name, and design with the aim of signifying a product or service to differentiate it from competitors. Properly-elaborated brands involve both physiological and psychological dimensions, which ensure that customers perceive the brand in a way that is intended by a company (Key and Czaplewski 2017). The perceptions of customers are associated with various parameters, such as personal experience and emotional response (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). Therefore, it is most valuable to build communication-based on the branding that meets the customers’ needs.

A customer buying products of a particular brand creates a feeling of approaching a certain lifestyle. Due to this, branded goods help the company is expanding its target audience and become more competitive. Killian and McManus (2015) state that branding is a powerful marketing concept, which not only focuses on a single element of marketing but also takes into account the results of a carefully thought-out group of activities on all aspects of marketing. The paramount goal of branding is to achieve the situation, in which a customer recognizes that the product has additional values that are unique in comparison with others goods and services (Ashley & Tuten 2015).

In the world of fashion, the brands understand that there is an opportunity to build a continuous dialogue between accompanying and customers. To effectively interact with the audience, they focus their attention on social networks (Fill & Turnbull 2016). The potential of this channel of virtual communication with consumers is noted by the majority of market players, promoting their brands on the most popular online platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, due to the multi-million audience of their users.

Speaking about social media direction, Percy (2018) considers it as an image project that informs customers about the latest products, features, and subtleties of the product, as well as a tool for announcing the news. Sahni, Wheeler and Chintagunta (2018) emphasize the possibility of using this communication channel for marketing products to enhance brand loyalty. Hudson et al. (2015) study current trends that allow making sales directly from social media and use them as a tool to increase sales.

In the modern mass clothing market, fashion brands are choosing a new concept – not a specific thing becomes a product, but a dream about it. The esteemed clients of the brand continue to remain the main target audience, and a tangible layer of potential buyers appears. It is effective to nurture a generation of loyal fans instead of looking for them among sophisticated audiences. It does not matter how many of these thousands or millions of followers actually go to the store and buy an item from a particular brand. It became important how many of them want to buy it (Van Grinsven & Das, 2016). Creating a story around the brand today is of great importance for marketing as it allows building a more personal relationship with the audience.

Direct email marketing is Marcom’s instrument that promotes trust creation and loyalty in customers. The individualized emails that are sent to users include personalized offers and discounts, which can be accessed directly via a link provided by the retailer (Andrews and Shimp 2017). The key advantages of such a tool are related to the fact that the majority of people check their emails several times a day, which ensures that the offer would be seen. A relatively inexpensive implementation, as well as the opportunity to obtain a list of potential customers from email service providers, can also be noted among the benefits of the identified tool.

Speaking of the benefits of Internet-based marketing communications, it primarily provides customers with the opportunity to receive information about products (Parveen, Jaafar, & Ainin, 2015; Swani et al. 2017). Although, if there is no information about the target product, or he or she does not find it, then most likely they would purchase the product from your competitor. In addition, the companies that use online Marcom save money on both sales staff and advertising. Most importantly, it allows for expanding the company from the local market to the international level (Rodney & Wakeham 2016). Unlike traditional advertising media, including print, radio, and TV, entering the market via the Internet is less expensive and gives rigorous statistical evidence on the effectiveness of a Marcom campaign (Keller, 2016; Opreana & Vinerean 2015).

Analysis of H&M’s Marcom

H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) is a Sweden-based international company that operates in the fast-fashion industry. In 2019, the company included more than 5,000 stores in 74 countries, being the second-largest clothing retailer after Zara. H&M has a strong online presence, which covers the official website for online shopping, social media, direct emailing services, and so on. According to the approach with which the company aims at reaching its customers, it provides the opportunity for millions of fans to share opinions and ideas and receive rapid answers to their requests (Briggs 2015). There are official accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, as well as some local platforms, such as the Chinese Sina Weibo.

H&M focuses on its specific target audience – millennials and women under 35, designing its Marcom for this audience. The company’s Marcom calls for rational consumption, concern for the environment, the slogans of feminism, and body positivity. The brand attracts plus-size females, people with disabilities, celebrities, and ordinary people to its advertising campaigns. H&M does not remove scars, stretch marks, and hair on the bodies of its models. This strategy is proved to be beneficial to attract a new audience and gain customer loyalty. The customers are happy to accept this idea since it helps ordinary women not to compare themselves with the ideal bodies in the photos and not feel flawed. In this way, H&M forms a loyal audience sharing the values of the company.

H&M also has its page on Facebook, where company employees communicate with those who prefer to monitor the company’s activities using this resource and send them microblogging service messages, the so-called tweets. Currently, the identified fashion brand has more than 14 million followers on Facebook, who are attracted by frequent posts that promote products, using not only mere calls to purchase a dress or trousers, but also applying creative ideas.

For example, H&M makes blogging outreach by providing links to third-party blog posts. Taking into account that bloggers gained significant popularity, this decision seems to be relevant to link the brand to various important messages that are translated by the selected persons. H&M’s Twitter account is another social media option that allows tweeting product photos, competition promos, and links to the blogs. This platform mainly serves dedicated customers, but it answers only a few users, which limits the interaction with customers.

One of the most effective ways to stimulate user activity on social networks is through competitions and rewards (Ots & Nyilasy, 2015). In the field of fashion, contests are also a popular tool for attracting an audience. The users usually receive discounts on purchases or gift certificates for their activity. For example, a Marcom strategy of organizing various competitions that require the users to submit their photos to win prizes is adopted by the identified company.

The campaign with the hashtag #HMBikeStyle to be posted on Facebook was aimed at the company’s bile collection. Such an approach allowed encouraging engagement based on clarifying the meaningfulness of being loyal to the brand. In addition, fashion shows and closed social events are conducted sometimes in public places. H&M held a raffle of tickets for the private show of Alexander Wang and the H&M collection in 2015. The participants were invited using any tools, from Photoshop to pencils and felt-tip pens, to draw a portrait of Alexander Wang, consisting of geometric shapes, and put it on Instagram with a special hashtag.

Every year, H&M launches a number of large advertising campaigns, which, in turn, are supplemented by smaller campaigns. Accordingly, it is possible to cause additional interest in the new collections of the season. These campaigns become exciting, ever-renewing invitations to visit H&M’s start collaborations. Namely, H&M presents a collection developed jointly with eminent designers and fashion houses, thus giving the opportunity to purchase premium-quality items at mass-market prices. It started in 2004 with cooperation with Karl Lagerfeld, which further involved Versace, Alexander Wang, Balmain, the Kardashian family, and so on.

The emails that are sent to customers regarding such collaboration with designers strengthen the brand as a fashion house and clarify its business concept. Most importantly, this cooperation is translated into social media platforms to make sure that more customers would learn about a new collection and related information. Other contents that is included in the company’s direct email marketing are personal offers and discounts, as well as notifications about upcoming collections and events. By sending some promotional emails, H&M encourages customers to visit an online store, select the preferred items, and easily make a purchase immediately.

H&M also has its page on the YouTube portal, where one can watch videos from Fashion TV and other interesting videos about fashion. On the company’s website, customers can always find the latest information on current campaigns, collections, stores, financial information, as well as learn about the possibilities of distance trading in a number of countries. Social media advertising is one of Marcom’s tools that was first introduced by H&M on the social network of Facebook. Such advertising uses the information in one’s profile, tracks whether a person is a fan of the brand and places relevant ads. This method is considered controversial, and the effectiveness of such advertising is still debated in the literature.

Recommendations

The guidelines for the strategic development of H&M’s Marcom should be focused on maintaining the position of the world’s largest mass-market clothing retail chain through global marketing penetration. The latter implies reaching new segments and markets due to a large number of retailers around the world, social media, and quick response to changing trends in the world of fashion and consumer preferences. In addition, greater communication with customers is needed since it is the basis for further establishment of their loyalty. In this connection, the company may consider paying more attention to providing feedback to its customers via social media platforms, responding to their comments. The increased number of socially-important events in terms of social media is another option to make the brand of H&M more valuable.

Conclusion

To conclude, this report provided a critical review of the literature on marketing communications based on its two components, such as social media and direct email marketing. The academic sources were properly examined to explore current trends and the effectiveness of these instruments in relation to brand equity and customer loyalty. It was discovered that H&M’s presence in social media ensures brand effectiveness and perceived value. Various online events, collaboration with celebrities, posts about products, and links to bloggers help the company in translating its messages to the target audience.

Reference List

Andrews, J. C. and Shimp, T. A. (2017) Advertising, promotion, and other aspects of integrated marketing communications. 10th edn. Mason, O: Cengage Learning.

Briggs, F. (2015) ‘H&M has largest audience on social media, latest data from Sprinklr show’, Forbes. Web.

Hudson, S., Roth, M. S., Madden, T. J., and Hudson, R. (2015) ‘The effects of social media on emotions, brand relationship quality, and word of mouth: an empirical study of music festival attendees’, Tourism Management, 47, pp. 68-76.

Key, T. M., and Czaplewski, A. J. (2017) ‘Upstream social marketing strategy: an integrated marketing communications approach’, Business Horizons, 60(3), pp. 325-333.

Killian, G., and McManus, K. (2015) ‘A marketing communications approach for the digital era: Managerial guidelines for social media integration’, Business Horizons, 58(5), pp. 539-549.

Nadeem, W., Andreini, D., Salo, J., and Laukkanen, T. (2015) ‘Engaging consumers online through websites and social media: a gender study of Italian Generation Y clothing consumers’, International Journal of Information Management, 35(4), pp. 432-442.

Sahni, N. S., Wheeler, S. C., and Chintagunta, P. (2018) ‘Personalization in email marketing: the role of noninformative advertising content’, Marketing Science, 37(2), pp. 236-258.

Schivinski, B., and Dabrowski, D. (2016) ‘The effect of social media communication on consumer perceptions of brands’, Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(2), pp. 189-214.

Yankova, I., and Ozuem, W. (2017) ‘Social media and its implications for marketing communications’, Advertising and Branding: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 251-270), IGI Global.

Ashley, C., & Tuten, T. (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1), 15-27.

Fill, C., & Turnbull, S. L. (2016). Marketing communications: brands, experiences and participation. Pearson.

Keller, K. L. (2016). Unlocking the power of integrated marketing communications: How integrated is your IMC program? Journal of Advertising, 45(3), 286-301.

Opreana, A., & Vinerean, S. (2015). A new development in online marketing: Introducing digital inbound marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 3(1), 1-8.

Ots, M., & Nyilasy, G. (2015). Integrated marketing communications (IMC): Why does it fail?: An analysis of practitioner mental models exposes barriers of IMC implementation. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(2), 132-145.

Parveen, F., Jaafar, N. I., & Ainin, S. (2015). Social media usage and organizational performance: Reflections of Malaysian social media managers. Telematics and informatics, 32(1), 67-78.

Percy, L. (2018). Strategic integrated marketing communications. Routledge.

Rodney, G., & Wakeham Dr, M. (2016). Social media marketing communications effect on attitudes among millennials in South Africa. The African Journal of Information Systems, 8(3), 2-12.

Swani, K., Milne, G. R., Brown, B. P., Assaf, A. G., & Donthu, N. (2017). What messages to post? Evaluating the popularity of social media communications in business versus consumer markets. Industrial Marketing Management, 62, 77-87.

Van Grinsven, B., & Das, E. (2016). Logo design in marketing communications: Brand logo complexity moderates exposure effects on brand recognition and brand attitude. Journal of Marketing Communications, 22(3), 256-270.

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